Sortly vs Ply: Which is Best for Your Trade Business?

The system that worked for your first two trucks might be holding you back now that you have ten. As your trade business grows, the complexity of managing materials across multiple vehicles, job sites, and a central warehouse increases exponentially.

When you compare Sortly vs. Ply, you’re really cmaking a strategic decision for the future. Which is why in this guide, we’ll help you choose a system that not only solves today’s problems but will also support your business for years to come.

Key Takeaways

• Define Your Primary Goal: Decide if you need a simple digital list of your assets or a comprehensive system to manage them. Sortly is great for basic tracking, while Ply is built to handle the entire material lifecycle, from purchasing and supplier bids to truck stock management.
• Evaluate Your Purchasing Process: If your biggest challenge is managing how you buy materials, a tool with built-in purchasing is essential. Ply connects inventory needs directly to purchase orders and supplier quotes, streamlining a process that often requires multiple separate tools.
• Consider Your Entire Software Stack: The right tool should work seamlessly with the software you already rely on. Ply’s deep, native integrations with platforms like ServiceTitan, Jobber, and QuickBooks eliminate double-entry and create a single source of truth for your materials and job costs.

Ply vs. Sortly: Which is Right for Your Trade Business?

Both Ply and Sortly are strong contenders in this space, but they’re built with different philosophies and for slightly different needs. Let’s break down the key differences to help you figure out which platform is the right fit for your trade business.

What Do Contractors Actually Need in an Inventory Tool?

Let’s be honest: your needs are different from a retail shop or a warehouse that may just ships boxes. You’re managing materials across multiple job sites, stocking service trucks, and dealing with dozens of suppliers. You need a tool that can keep up.

Must-Have Features for Your Business

When you’re comparing options, a few key features are non-negotiable. You need mobile barcode scanning for your team in the field, low stock alerts to prevent project delays, and the ability to customize fields to track what matters to you.

Sortly covers these basics well, helping you manage stock levels and supplies efficiently. Ply includes these essentials too, but adds another layer of features built for contractors. This includes the ability to create standardized material lists and custom pricebooks, monitor parts across every truck in your fleet, and manage the entire purchasing process from a single platform.

The Key Differences Between Ply and Sortly

The biggest difference between Ply and Sortly comes down to focus and pricing structure.

• Sortly is a general inventory tool with a broad appeal, offering a free version and paid plans that start around $49/month. It excels at visual tracking and is designed for ease of use across many industries.
• Ply, however, is laser-focused on the trades. Its straightforward pricing is per user, designed to scale with your team. More importantly, Ply is built to handle the complexities of procurement, allowing you to manage formal RFQs and supplier bids directly within the platform.

If your biggest headache is just knowing what you have, Sortly can work. If your challenges are tied to buying, managing, and deploying materials efficiently, Ply is built to solve that specific problem.

A Look at the Core Features

Ply and Sortly are both designed to help you get a handle on your inventory, but they approach the problem from different angles. Let’s break down what that means for your day-to-day operations.

Managing Your Inventory and Truck Stock

Sortly is a straightforward app for tracking tools, materials, and equipment, whether they’re in the warehouse or on a truck. It’s a great digital replacement for a spreadsheet.

Ply takes this a step further by helping you standardize the materials used across your entire business. You can build custom pricebooks using a vast library of materials, ensuring every tech is pulling from the same list of approved parts. This creates consistency and control over what gets used on jobs.

Scanning Barcodes on the Go

Both apps let your team scan items with their phones for quick and accurate tracking. This simplifies checking items in and out of the warehouse or a tech’s van.

With Ply, you can also print material barcodes directly from your phone using a supported printer. This means you can easily label new stock as it arrives or create labels for custom kits on the fly.

Creating and Tracking Purchase Orders

This is a key area where the two platforms diverge. Sortly is primarily focused on tracking the inventory you already own.

Ply, on the other hand, has a complete purchasing system built right in. You can send formal requests for quotes (RFQs) to your suppliers, collect their bids, and then generate, track, and manage purchase orders all from one place. This connects your inventory needs directly to your buying process, closing a loop that many businesses struggle to manage with separate tools.

Getting Low Stock Alerts Automatically

Both Sortly and Ply offer automatic low-stock alerts. Sortly will notify you when your quantities dip below a certain threshold, giving you a heads-up that it’s time to reorder.

Ply’s alerts are integrated directly into its purchasing workflow. When you get a notification, you can immediately kick off the reordering process within the same system, turning an alert into an actionable PO in just a few clicks.

Making the Software Your Own

Your business has its own way of doing things, and your software should adapt to that. Sortly offers good flexibility, allowing you to create custom fields, tags, and categories to organize your items however you see fit. This is helpful for tailoring the system to your inventory.

Ply focuses its customization on the materials themselves. The ability to build and maintain your own pricebooks means you’re standardizing your entire material list and pricing structure, which is a huge advantage for quoting jobs and managing profitability.

Comparing Price and Overall Value

The goal is to find a tool that delivers real value without surprising you with hidden fees or forcing you into expensive upgrades just to get the features you need to run your business. Let’s break down how Ply and Sortly approach pricing so you can see which model fits your budget and your team.

How Ply’s Pricing Works

Ply keeps things simple and transparent. Its pricing is built around flexible tiers designed for different team sizes and business needs. Every plan includes access to Ply’s essential features, like purchase order management, inventory tracking, and integrations with tools such as QuickBooks, ServiceTitan, and Jobber.

Breaking Down Sortly’s Tiers

Sortly uses a tiered pricing structure. They offer a free plan for very small-scale needs, but most trade businesses will need one of their paid plans. These include an Advanced plan at $29 per month, an Ultra plan at $89 per month, and a custom Enterprise option. Keep in mind Sortly’s plans come with a set number of User Licenses, and adding more can push you into a higher-priced tier.

How They Connect with Your Other Tools

To be truly effective, your inventory management sotware needs to fit seamlessly with you tech stack, from the field service platform your techs use daily to the accounting software your office relies on. Let’s look at how Ply and Sortly approach integrations.

Syncing with Field Service Platforms

Ply connects natively with ServiceTitan, Jobber, and Housecall Pro, allowing parts used on a job to be automatically deducted from inventory and added to the work order. You can even send RFQs and collect supplier bids right through Ply, keeping purchasing, inventory, and field teams aligned.

Sortly can connect to some systems via Zapier, but lacks the purpose-built field service integrations that make Ply such a strong fit for service-based businesses.

Connecting to Your Accounting Software

Ply offers a robust two-way sync with QuickBooks and Sage Intacct, so purchase orders, bills, and inventory values are always up to date, no double entry required.

Sortly also offers a QuickBooks Online integration, but it’s more limited in scope, especially for businesses that need detailed job costing or multi-location visibility.

How the Mobile Apps Compare

Both platforms know your team isn’t sitting at a desk all day. Sortly’s mobile app is great for general inventory tracking and works even when offline. Ply’s mobile app, on the other hand, is designed specifically for field techs; it lets them check truck stock, log materials, and request parts on the spot, tying field activity directly to purchasing and billing in the office.

Options for Custom Connections (API)

For businesses that use niche tools, both platforms provide API access for custom integrations. However, most trade companies find Ply’s pre-built integrations cover what they need right out of the box, saving time, development costs, and headaches.

Getting Started: Setup and Support

Switching to a new inventory system can feel like a huge undertaking, especially when your team is already stretched thin. You need a tool that’s not only easy to set up but also comes with reliable support when you hit a snag. After all, time spent troubleshooting software is time you’re not spending on billable work. So how do Sortly and Ply handle onboarding? Let’s have a look.

What’s the Setup Process Like?

Ply was built for real-world trade operations, not just data on a spreadsheet. Every new customer gets a guided onboarding experience, including an optional on-site warehouse setup. Ply’s team helps map your stock, create labels, and establish consistent processes from day one so you start with a clean, organized foundation.

Sortly takes a more do-it-yourself approach: you import your inventory from a spreadsheet, organize it into folders, and add photos or custom fields. It’s simple and flexible but may require more manual setup time, especially if you’re managing multiple trucks or warehouses.

Where to Find Training and Resources

Ply customers get continuous support beyond setup, with live training sessions, an on-demand help center, and access to webinars that cover both features and best practices for managing materials in the trades.

Sortly also provides self-paced resources, including help articles and webinars, and some paid plans include access to a Customer Success Manager for extra guidance.

What Are the Technical Requirements?

Both platforms are fully cloud-based and work across desktop and mobile devices. Ply’s mobile app is built specifically for field techs; it’s designed to make tasks like logging parts and checking truck stock quick and intuitive.

Sortly’s app focuses on general inventory tracking and offers offline functionality, which can be helpful in low-connectivity environments.

Who Can You Call for Help?

When issues come up in the field, timing matters. Ply offers responsive, human support designed for contractors who can’t afford downtime. Customers frequently call out Ply’s fast and personal service as one of their favorite aspects of the platform.

Sortly provides support primarily through email and a library of help documents; helpful for troubleshooting, but not ideal when you need answers right away.

How to Make the Right Choice

Choosing the right software comes down to understanding what your business needs right now and where you plan to be in a year or two. Let’s walk through the key questions to ask yourself to figure out whether Ply or Sortly is the better fit for your team.

Does Your Business Size Matter?

Not as much as you’d think. While Sortly is often aimed at smaller teams tracking basic assets, the real differentiator is complexity, not size. Even a two-person plumbing crew manages trucks, jobs, and materials, not just shelf stock.

Ply was built for trade workflows from the ground up. Whether you’re a small team or a growing operation, it supports the way you actually work, handling purchasing, tracking, and multi-location management without extra add-ons.

Which Tool Will Grow with You?

Think beyond today’s setup. As you add techs, trucks, or warehouses, your system should keep up. Sortly handles simple inventory well but isn’t built for scaling in the trades; you may quickly outgrow it as operations expand.

Ply, on the other hand, is designed to scale. It supports multi-warehouse setups, integrated purchasing, and real-time data syncs across your entire team, helping you grow without losing control or visibility.

Matching Features to Your Needs

Sortly is a solid visual inventory tool, great for tracking what you have and where it is. But most contractors need more. Ply connects inventory, purchasing, and job workflows in one system, giving you visibility from purchase order to truck stock. It’s built for managing the full materials lifecycle, not just counting parts.

Planning Your Budget

It’s easy to compare monthly prices, but real value comes from long-term efficiency. Sortly’s tiered plans can seem affordable at first, but key features often live behind higher-priced upgrades.

Ply keeps pricing predictable with a simple per-user model and full feature access. That means no hidden fees and no limits as you grow, just a system that saves you money through less waste, smarter purchasing, and fewer headaches.

Frequently Asked Questions

My main problem is just knowing what’s on my trucks. Isn’t a simple app like Sortly enough? It can be a great start! If your only goal is to have a digital list of what you own, Sortly works well for that. However, most contractors find that knowing what’s on the truck is just one piece of the puzzle. Ply is designed to connect that information to the rest of your business, so you can see which parts are used on which jobs, automatically trigger reordering when stock is low, and ensure your techs are always using the right materials from your approved pricebook.

Does Ply help with actually buying materials, or just tracking them? This is one of the biggest differences between the two. Ply has a complete purchasing system built right in. You can manage supplier catalogs, send out requests for quotes, and create and track purchase orders all from one place. It’s designed to streamline your entire procurement process, not just count the inventory you already have on hand.

How does Ply work with my other software like QuickBooks or ServiceTitan? Ply is built to connect directly with the tools you already use. It has deep, two-way integrations with major field service platforms like ServiceTitan, Jobber, and Housecall Pro, as well as accounting software like QuickBooks and Sage Intacct. This means when a tech uses a part on a job, it’s automatically updated in your inventory and on the work order, which keeps your job costing and billing perfectly in sync without any manual data entry.

We’re a small team. Is Ply too much for us? Not at all. Ply is designed for trade businesses of all sizes, from a couple of trucks to a large fleet. The challenges of managing materials, purchasing, and truck stock exist whether you have two techs or twenty. In fact, putting a strong system in place when you’re small is one of the best ways to set yourself up for smooth, profitable growth down the road.

Beyond features, what’s the main reason a trade business would choose Ply over Sortly? It really comes down to focus. Sortly is a flexible tool that can be adapted for many industries, while Ply was built from the ground up with the specific daily workflow of a contractor in mind. Every feature, from mobile warehouse management for trucks to the integrated purchasing system, is designed to solve the unique material management problems that trade businesses face every single day.